


You're Late

by alexiel_neesan



Category: Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 00:56:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexiel_neesan/pseuds/alexiel_neesan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He's older. He's still Bucky.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're Late

He’s older. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth. Seventy years in the future and Steve has nothing to show for it, but Bucky is older and— His hair is longer, sticks to his neck and his brow. There’s the arm, too. Tony was called in to deactivate it, and it sits at Bucky’s side, too heavy to be moved by the fever’s restlessness, but cuffed to the rail all the same, like the other arm, the one of flesh and blood and clammy under Steve’s palm.

Natasha came and went, never staying too long. She always left before Bucky came to, the few times he did, eyes fixed on the ceiling and teeth gritted. Steve stayed and sat, and he didn’t move. He could take the Winter Soldier if it came to this. He wasn’t sure he could take sitting next to the friend he had mourned less than two years ago —two years ago, and seventy-two years ago, and a lifetime ago.

Bucky’s not exactly awake, not exactly aware; he’s mumbling, head rolling on the sweat-damp pillow. It sounds like numbers. Not in english, but in russian. Gabe had taught him, taught them all, the Howling Commando, a little, enough to hear the difference between french and german and polish and russian, and manage a greeting.

It repeats over and over. It takes three repeats before Steve realises it begins with “Yakov Barnes.” Then the numbers. He counts the six, and the three— the only ones he’s certain he knows. He knows Bucky’s serial number as well as his, better even.

Even with his arm restrained, Bucky manages to grab Steve’s shirt. It’s between one blink and the next, from restless and fevered to the dangerous calm and focus Steve had trusted to have his back and had been scared to fight.

It’s Bucky’s number, the one from the 107th, the one he was mumbling the day Steve found him and blew up the first Hydra base.

“You should have left me then.”  
   



End file.
